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Sunday, 15 April 2012

Updates and revisions

It has been a long time since I’ve posted anything here, not that I haven’t been busy with training etc, but I was finishing my Masters of Science thesis. It’s done now so I can get back to writing articles for back-to-primal. I was still training and building over my absence from here, so I have quite a few articles in mind so stay tuned.

Now for some revisions:

Some of the gear I build broke down, gave out, or has been modified since I posted it here. So I’ll go over some of the change I’ve made.

First up my gymnastic rings set up. I used quite cheap and thin straps; they were rated to hold my weight, but should not have been left out in the weather. Added to this, the straps spent their whole life rubbing against the edge of the beam I hung them on. So one day when I went out to do some ring assisted pistols and the strap just gave way and I fell flat on my ass. Switch to the other strap and that too gave way. I’m really lucky not to have the straps give way while skinning the cat, or attempting a back lever.

So this is my 2.0 set up. I went out and bought a second set of straps and a pair of bolts which I set into the wooden beam. I can now hook my straps into the bolt, the way the straps were designed. I can also take my straps down easily, so they don’t perish in the sun again. Moral of the story – don’t leave your straps out in the weather.

The second change I made to my rings was to cut the rope out and replace it with heavier straps. The rope was looking a bit perished from the sun and I didn’t want to risk them giving out too. The new straps (plus the hook I added) give me more options when setting up my rings, and are much safer than the rope set up I had.

Me using the version 2.0 rings with my homemade weight belt.

As for the sand bags, the larger 30 kg bag I built got very little use. The ropes I used were to thin, and difficult to use. Maybe some larger webbing would have worked better. But in the end, the outer bag wasn’t UV treated and just fell apart after summer. Luckily the inner bags stayed together.

Anyway, I bought myself a brute force sandbag (see my review) and used the inner bags for that. The only issue I’ve had with my inner bags is that I used very fine sand for filler which has worked its way out of the bags slowly. I’ve since put two of the inner bags into thick plastic bags to contain the sand. I may yet do this for all of my inner bags.

Finally my medicine ball has been padded and wrapped in a cheap camping mat ($10 NZ) to use as a slam ball. Its working really well, the duct tape is a little slippery, but that adds to the fun. I could tape it up with paper tape or something similar to add grip, but I’m happy with it for now.

That’s all my revisions for now. Stay tuned for more articles to come.